"Canaille" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... everybody was like me, there would not be so many scoundrels going about, their pockets filled with other people's money, and from the top of their carriage laughing at the poor fools they have ruined. Come, my ten thousand francs, canaille, or I take my pay ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... prepares the supreme feast. In "La Dame aux Camelias," still, she shows herself, as an actress, the greatest actress in the world. It is all sheer acting; there is no suggestion, as with Duse, there is no canaille attractiveness, as with Rejane; the thing is plastic, a modelling of emotion before you, with every vein visible; she leaves nothing to the imagination, gives you every motion, all the physical signs of death, all the fierce abandonment to every mood, to grief, to delight, to lassitude. ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... madam, when I mention trade, I only mean low, dull, mechanick trade, such as the canaille practise; there are several trades reputable enough, which people of fashion may practise; such as gaming, intriguing, voting, ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... an hundred of the enemy's rabble, drawing water. I was on a rampart watching the enemy pitch their camp; and, seeing the crowd of idlers round the stream, I asked M. du Pont, commissary of the artillery, to send one cannon-shot among this canaille: he gave me a flat refusal, saying that all this sort of people was not worth the powder would be wasted on them. Again I begged him to level the cannon, telling him, "The more dead, the fewer enemies;" which he did for my sake: ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... for there is always a certain amount of night even in this madness, there is suicide in this duel, and those words which are intended to be insults—beggars, canaille, ochlocracy, populace—exhibit, alas! rather the fault of those who reign than the fault of those who suffer; rather the fault of the privileged than the fault of ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... be described, that is to say, ennobled. A scene in the guard-house, a popular uprising, the fish-market, the galleys, the wine-shop, the poule au pot of Henri Quatre, are treasure-trove in her eyes. She seizes upon this canaille, washes it clean, and sews her tinsel and spangles over its villainies; purpureus assuitur pannus. Her object seems to be to deliver patents of nobility to all these roturiers of the drama; and each of these patents under the ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... contact of those terrible "dames de la halle," who for hundreds of years had claimed the privilege of speaking face to face with royalty, and who now pressed around her, with jokes that crimsoned her cheeks while they were rapturously received by the canaille. ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... James of England and Jaquette his wife, when their time should come. And when the time did come, and James sought his brother's kingdom, it is on record that Louis hastened to receive and console him, and promised to restore, incontinently, those islands from which the canaille had turned him. Between brothers such a gift was a trifle; and the courtiers said to one another reverently:* "The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool." There was no blasphemy in the ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... your wounds, and see whether the thumps you make such a babyish outcry about really were as violent and overpowering as you represent. If they were not, I will have you skinned alive, every mother's son of you, like the eels at Melun; and now, begone! out of my sight, quick, you vile canaille!" The discomfited ruffians turned and fled, thankful to make their escape, and forgetful for the moment of their painful wounds and bruises; such abject terror did the young duke's anger inspire in the breasts of those hardened villains. When the poor devils had disappeared, Vallombreuse ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... bleu de la Canaille, (the resort of the lower orders;) but before stepping over the threshold of the cabaret of Guillotin, even the canaille themselves look twice, as in this repository are only to be seen prostitutes with their bullies, pick-pockets ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various
... They were mostly canaille, who had gathered during the fight, and had viewed all that passed from the farther side of the railings. While some snarled and raged at me like wolves, calling me 'Butcher!' and 'Cut-throat!' or cried out that Berault was at his trade again, others threatened ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... people, again it is not so well. Unlucky! For there are twenty to twenty-five millions of them. Whom, however, we lump together into a kind of dim compendious unity, monstrous but dim, far off, as the canaille; or, more humanely, as 'the masses.' Masses, indeed: and yet, singular to say, if, with an effort of imagination, thou follow them, over broad France, into their clay hovels, into their garrets and hutches, the masses consist all ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... punish you for all your impertinences by being as tedious, as discursive, as incoherent and as unsatisfactory as possible. Besides, here I am, cooped up in a dirty balloon, with some one or two hundred of the canaille, all bound on a pleasure excursion, (what a funny idea some people have of pleasure!) and I have no prospect of touching terra firma for a month at least. Nobody to talk to. Nothing to do. When one has nothing to do, then is the time to correspond with ones friends. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... veil whose large-meshed surface was broken by a single design, a large black butterfly anchored just across her dainty little nose. A most astonishing costume in which to appear in the Rev. John Burns's unpretentious little church crowded with the canaille of the city! ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... consideration is—you're canaille! Because you're impotent to paint I am to—no, it's too much! Canaille! Canaille! That's what you are! I shall go ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... shall not hazard my reputation for gallantry, by tracing the contrast more closely. But evil times had singularly acted upon the physiognomy even of the nobles. The age of the roturier had been the climacteric of France. Generals from the ranks, countesses from the canaille, legislators from the dregs of the populace, and proprietors from the mingled stock of the parasite and the plunderer, naturally gave the countenance, formed by their habits, to the nation ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... day, I would say to the duke my noble husband, "My dearest grace, I think, when I travel alone in my chariot from Hammersmith to London, I will not care for the outriders. In these days, when there is so much poverty and so much disaffection in the country, we should not eclabousser the canaille with the ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "pray do not fail to remember, that we have passed a large portion of our life among those whom you denominate canaille, and who always were permitted the privilege of looking at us all. I do not recollect that we felt it any derogation from anything that belonged ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... that horse!" she said, her whole face taking the grayish color of her lips, but her black eyes growing smaller and brighter. "Hand me those reins, and let me pass! What canaille are you to ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... use his steel!" laughed M. Beaucaire, as his point passed through a tawdry waistcoat. For a moment he cut through the ring and cleared a space about him, and Lady Mary saw his face shining in the moonlight. "Canaille!" he hissed, as his horse sank beneath him; and, though guarding his head from the rain of blows from above, he managed to drag headlong from his saddle the man who had hamstrung the poor brute. The fellow came suddenly to ...
— Monsieur Beaucaire • Booth Tarkington
... the Whig aristocracy. These latter talked about truth, and liberty and herself, and she supposed it was all as it should be. As to the millions, the people, she never inquired into their situation. She had a horror of the 'canaille', but anything of 'sangre asul' had a charm for her. When she was dying she said, 'Let me die in peace; let my last moments be undisturbed.' Yet she ordered the cards of every visitor to be brought to her. Among them was one from the Duc de Richelieu. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... danger, in a deluging discomfort, or the anxieties consequent on being lost in the bush, the pipe is the ever ready comforter; and one which rarely fails to bring consolation to the mind. Well, therefore, may it be imagined that the pipe is "the friend of the people;" and that, not only of the canaille, the "great unwashed," but the entire nation; who in this day of general enlightenment and mental percipiency, have not failed to distinguish its claims, and to "render homage where homage is due." Many are the shifts, and crude the inventions in the bush, when emergencies call forth ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... de Berey!" replied a smiling habitan, "it was not we, but the sacrilegious canaille of St. Anne who boiled the Easter eggs! If you don't believe us, send some of the good Gray Friars down to try our love. See if they do not find everything soft for them at Beauport, from our hearts to our feather beds, to ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby |
